Does peppermint oil repel mosquitoes? If you often bitten by mosquitoes in your house, you probably try all kinds of method, or natural remedies that could help you get rid of them. Commonly, the suggestion of using peppermint oil will come along in the discussion as well. If you wonder, whether it is true or only a myth, find the answer on the following explanation. However, before jumping to the answer, it would be better for you to know more about peppermint oil.

General information of peppermint oil

Sometimes, people also use the term of peppermint extract as well as peppermint essential to call peppermint oil. It is the result of the harvesting process from the stems as well as leaves of the peppermint plants. The most common harvesting process used is the steam distillation.

The compound that you will find in peppermint oil includes menthol, limonene, cineol, and many more. Besides all of these compounds, peppermint oil also consists of anti inflammatory, antioxidant, analgesic, antimicrobial, as well as antibacterial properties.

The benefits offered by peppermint oil

The properties having by peppermint oil make it have many benefits that you could use. First, it could congest the human respiratory system. In other words, you could use peppermint oil to relieve certain illness such as cough, cold, or even bronchitis. Second, peppermint could show a good work as a digestive aid. It soothes the digestive system and helps to solve the bloating problem. When you have nausea or vomiting problem, you could use peppermint oil as well.

On the other hand, it could be the right home remedies if you have headache. There have been many evidences proving that peppermint oil is able to get rid of headache as well as migraine. Peppermint oil also has the ability to help the detoxification process in your body. Last, you could use it as the reliever of muscle pain. You just need to apply in on the painful areas. Wait for some minutes and the pain, tension or even stiffness in that area will vanish.

Peppermint oil to repel mosquitoes and any other insect

There is a study even done by University of Delhi, India regarding this matter. The test involved the use of peppermint oil to one arm of the participant, while another hand covered by ethanol, a compound that also believed has the repellent property of mosquitoes. The participant then let to sit still for about 150 minutes. The result showed that, the arm with ethanol had 2 bites of mosquito, while another arm had zero bite of mosquito. Based from this experiment, we can conclude that peppermint oil indeed has the property of repelling any mosquitoes to bite us.

The application of peppermint oil

Actually, you could just buy it on the store. However, if you want to make your own, you only need half cup of coconut oil, melt it first then mix it with teaspoon peppermint oil. After that, you could apply it on your skin. We hope this explanation could answer your curiosity about does peppermint oil repel mosquitoes or not.